GeneralJim:common sense is an oxymoron: dready zim: Sevenizgud will cream his pants when he sees this thread...

No shiat.

And I see the thread has now gone green (as opposed to having been greenlit).

Meanwhile...

[www.skepticalscience.com image 500x341]

/obligOh, yes, DO tell us how other people think.

Don't cherry-pick the time scale. We are in an ice age, in one of the brief interglacial periods.

And, we're almost done with it, and will be back in a major glaciation soon. Here's what it looks like. Where's your global warming god now?

[earthintime.com image 506x286]

Your graph shows a "Holocene high-low difference" in temperature of no more than 1C. You also claim that the anthropogenic effects on climate are trivial.

Unfortunately, this contradicts some of your most cherished supporting links, like these:

Peer-Reviewed literature showing that climate sensitivity is actually MUCH less than the IPCC suggests, 2.0 to 4.5 K, at 66% certainty. Data from OBSERVATIONS show the least sensitivity, "data" from models show the most.

So even your own sources, the ones you cite to minimize the effects of CO2, predict an anthropogenic warming effect which is greater than the entire natural Holocene temperature range.

This is one of the reasons why it's so hard to take you seriously. You post self-contradictory claims; then, instead of acknowledging the inconsistency and trying to find better evidence, you get upset and defensive when these contradictions are pointed out. Soon, a new AGW thread appears, and the whole sorry spectacle repeats itself.

An article by David Rose appears today in the Mail on Sunday under the title: 'Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released... and here is the chart to prove it'

It is the second article Mr Rose has written which contains some misleading information, after he wrote an article earlier this year on the same theme - you see our response to that one here.

To address some of the points in the article published today:

Firstly, the Met Office has not issued a report on this issue. We can only assume the article is referring to the completion of work to update the HadCRUT4 global temperature dataset compiled by ourselves and the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit.

We announced that this work was going on in March and it was finished this week. You can see the HadCRUT4 website here.

Secondly, Mr Rose says the Met Office made no comment about its decadal climate predictions. This is because he did not ask us to make a comment about them.

You can see our full response to all of the questions Mr Rose did ask us below:

Hi David,

Here's a response to your questions. I've kept them as concise as possible but the issues you raise require considerable explanation.

Q.1 "First, please confirm that they do indeed reveal no warming trend since 1997."

The linear trend from August 1997 (in the middle of an exceptionally strong El Nino) to August 2012 (coming at the tail end of a double-dip La Nina) is about 0.03°C/decade, amounting to a temperature increase of 0.05°C over that period, but equally we could calculate the linear trend from 1999, during the subsequent La Nina, and show a more substantial warming.

As we've stressed before, choosing a starting or end point on short-term scales can be very misleading. Climate change can only be detected from multi-decadal timescales due to the inherent variability in the climate system. If you use a longer period from HadCRUT4 the trend looks very different. For example, 1979 to 2011 shows 0.16°C/decade (or 0.15°C/decade in the NCDC dataset, 0.16°C/decade in GISS). Looking at successive decades over this period, each decade was warmer than the previous - so the 1990s were warmer than the 1980s, and the 2000s were warmer than both. Eight of the top ten warmest years have occurred in the last decade.

Over the last 140 years global surface temperatures have risen by about 0.8ºC. However, within this record there have been several periods lasting a decade or more during which temperatures have risen very slowly or cooled. The current period of reduced warming is not unprecedented and 15 year long periods are not unusual.

Q.2 "Second, tell me what this says about the models used by the IPCC and others which have predicted a rise of 0.2 degrees celsius per decade for the 21st century. I accept that there will always be periods when a rising gradient may be interrupted. But this flat period has now gone on for about the same time as the 1980 - 1996 warming."

The models exhibit large variations in the rate of warming from year to year and over a decade, owing to climate variations such as ENSO, the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation. So in that sense, such a period is not unexpected. It is not uncommon in the simulations for these periods to last up to 15 years, but longer periods are unlikely.

Q.3 "Finally, do these data suggest that factors other than CO2 - such as multi-decadal oceanic cycles - may exert a greater influence on climate than previously realised?"

We have limited observations on multi-decadal oceanic cycles but we have known for some time that they may act to slow down or accelerate the observed warming trend. In addition, we also know that changes in the surface temperature occur not just due to internal variability, but are also influenced by "external forcings", such as changes in solar activity, volcanic eruptions or aerosol emissions. Combined, several of these factors could account for some or all of the reduced warming trend seen over the last decade - but this is an area of ongoing research.

----

The below graph which shows years ranked in order of global temperature was not included in the response to Mr Rose, but is useful in this context as it illustrates the point made above that eight of the warmest years on record have occurred in the past decade.

GeneralJim:And, it's funny how CERN's CLOUD experiment backed him up on the most controversial of his propositions...NATURE ARTICLE.

This is, unsurprisingly, orthogonal to reality, as I've pointed out to GeneralJim many times. What the CLOUD results have found so far say nothing about Svensmark's ludicrous claims, but rather have mostly offered tentative support for the consensus on GCR-CCN interactions. This is something I've pointed out to GeneralJim repeatedly:

Back in reality, the CERN experimental results so far have done nothing to demonstrate that GCRs can actually influence real world cloud formation, or more importantly that such an influence could be climatically significant. All the CERN results have done so far is demonstrate that sulfuric acid aerosol nucleation rates increase in the presence of ammonia and ionization (and orders of magnitude less so for the latter than the former), but that even under controlled conditions neither are capable of actually reproducing observed nucleation rates, and that the effect of increased ionization was negligible in temperature conditions relevant to climatically significant cloud formation (i.e. the boundary layer).

That GCRs can hypothetically influence cloud nucleation is not something denied by the climate science community generally or the IPCC specifically. That there is any evidence either in the paleoclimatic or observational records or in the CERN results that demonstrates a large GCR effect on clouds, let alone global climate, is simply false.

In other words- back in reality, GeneralJim is still wrong about everything.

chuckufarlie:Jon Snow: SevenizGud: Oh, ok. Then show the same graph, and put the right data on it.

[i.imgur.com image 500x375]

The slope is positive, lies from TFA not withstanding. However, the interval is insufficiently long over which to assess the climatological significance of the trend. You need 20-30 years or more to make meaningful statements about climatological trends if you're just looking at a plot of global temp anomaly.

This is what the past 30 years looks like:

[i.imgur.com image 500x375]

The trend is positive, statistically significant, and climatologically meaningful.

Why is it that you refuse to believe what is in the article? You continue to push your agenda even when the facts show that you are wrong. That is hardly intelligent.

nicksteel:I find it strange that you are willing to blindly follow these people without question. Now THAT is moronic.

It doesn't match the headline, insofar as it's not a plot of the past 16 years' (192 months) data. See my version above. You have to be even more specific inyour cherry picking than that to really take advantage of the '97-'98 El Niño.

Oldiron_79:ZAZ: I would never buy a Smart for the gas mileage, which is only a little better than regular-sized competition, but if I had to park in unmarked spaces in the city I would be tempted.

As a 2 seater subcompact it has worse gas mileage(32 mpg) than many 4 seater compacts, and not that much better than many mid sized and full sized cars, unless you are buying it for parallel parking in a large city its more like the dumb car than the smart car.

As the owner of a Smart Car, I bought it for more than just good gas mileage and easy parking, although those are two things I love about my car.

I also bought it for the huge amounts of head and leg room (I'm 6'8". I need the interior room that the Smart has.), the fact that I could actually afford it (it was just over 15k walkout price), It never has to be painted, doesn't show scratches, needs the oil changed every 10k miles, has a glass/see through plastic top, leather seats, and a hundred other little things that make it the perfect car for me.

Every time i hear one of you idiots that's never owned one call it something retarded like "the Dumb Car" it pisses me right the fark off.

Well that wasn't a completely useless article, you just have to read it carefully and prise the op-ed components away from the actual reporting. But the first implication ('hey, lookit, global warming stopped... ya think maybe it's over for good???') and the final comments (butthurt about the 'denier' label combined with his own labeling other viewpoints as "catastrophist") kinda ruin any pretense of seeking after truth, here.

We'd be better served if models had been explored with a little more depth. What are their shortcomings? Are they even supposed to accurately predict what's going to happen in a given 16 year period? That last question seems like the obvious one that's raised by the data, I have no idea what the answer is, I'd really like to know, and the article does absolutely nothing about getting to the bottom of it. Mr. David Rose is either a lazy journalist, or a disingenuous one, or maybe a whole lot of both.

Even if global warming didn't exist, oil reserves are finite and mostly tied to a part of the world that is plagued with unrest. It is in the nation's interest to pursue alternative fuel and electric vehicles, climate change or none. Since we'll never be able to cover our need for petroleum with domestic sources, I'd go so far as to say that pursuing renewable energy and vehicles to take advantage of them is a matter of national security and should be treated as such from a funding point of view. We don't want another oil crisis crippling our nation like in the 70s.